Reality Contrived
by michellemybelle25
Summary: It's never wise to tangle with the Opera Ghost.


OK, yes, I realize you all are cursing me right now and wondering if I've lost my mind not to be updating "Scripted In Love's Scars" and posting something else instead. BUT today is my birthday, and it has been an awful week thanks to a mixture of pregnancy, sickness, and not being able to self-medicate because of said pregnancy. So I needed something that makes me happy; THIS makes me happy, and I thought you guys might want to share in being happy, too. This is kind of like my birthday present to all of you and myself because I can't read this without smiling. This was another one of my Colorado creations this summer. It's just something random and fun. Enjoy! AND I vow to all my faithful readers that you WILL be getting the next chapter of "Scripted In Love's Scars" this weekend.

SUMMARY: It's never wise to tangle with the Opera Ghost.

"Reality Contrived"

The second the mirrored doorway opened, Christine darted from the dark, dank catacombs into the sanctity of her dressing room, gasping necessary breaths deep into her lungs and chastising herself to keep silent. _Oh God_… He was in pursuit, and it would be mere moments before he caught up with her escape. Onward, without pause, she raced into the abandoned corridors and toward the stage, knowing somewhere in her mind that the theatre would be _empty_, everyone gone for the day and no one left to save her from the Opera Ghost's wrath.

Faster, she flew with terror to give her wings, unwilling to contemplate what would happen when he captured her again. How often she was his victim! He could break her will in his murderous rampage with little effort and leave her nothing to do but beg for mercy. He was far too good at taking the upper hand, playing the god she knew he wasn't. His fingers would come upon her, search her skin like a spider's legs and choose their biting place, and she would succumb.

No, …not this time. With the flames of conviction searing her veins, she quickened her pace, exiting the wings onto the wood of the stage floor. No one remained but the moon peeking in from the windows of the ceiling and illuminating like spotlights of silver glow.

Not a single sound gave Erik away as he dove at her like a predatory wolf; no, but a sound was what he earned in triumph as a scream left her lips the instant her body tumbled to the ground. He was ready to claim victory, growling sinister and malevolent, but she squirmed beyond his reach and scooted along the stage floor from one puddle of moonlight to the next. Lunging after her, he caught her ankle in his fierce fist and yanked, bringing her back down with a thud. The smooth wood of the stage aided his intention like an accomplice to the crime, making it easy to pull and have her body gliding back toward his eager hold.

"No! Stop!" she shrieked, but he leapt atop her and pinned her down with his weight, catching her flailing arms and forcing them still alongside her thrashing head.

"Damn you!" he roared and did not cower from exposing moon-glow as he leaned over her and silvers painted their hues upon his unmasked face. He kept every feature vividly within light's pool and set before her wide, horrified eyes. "Yes, look and see the devil's face, Christine. See the nightmare you uncovered with your selfish hands. Am I righteous, my dear? A being on the verge of redemption? Can you decipher the sins on my soul? And now _you_ will become one more?"

As he spoke, he pressed his hips into hers, arching her into the hard floor as she squirmed and tried to disentangle from his grip. "Erik, please."

"Please? Please, Christine? But pleadings are pointless; surely, you know that. They do nothing but arouse me further. You foolish child, playing games with devils."

"What games?"

He leaned near, so that his malformed features were the only thing in her line of sight and hated her for her cringe of revulsion. "Your little feminine ploys and temptations. Coming to my home and staying under my roof, just you and I secluded from the world, and surely you know what that does to me! I am a _man_ of flesh and bone, and do you discount that fact as you prance about and give desire a name and a life? You, always _your_ image spinning through my fantasies, your body teasing me with these curves and this softness. You _burn_ me without ever realizing your power!"

Bending to her terror-stricken face, he dared to breathe her scent deep into his lungs, drugging himself upon its fragrance and pretending it was saturated in her arousal and not her horror. "Oh, Christine…" He moaned from the source of passion's well with thick, husky letters and felt them each graze her skin like caresses.

As he dug his erection into her soft shape, the vehement wanting surged beyond control, and he lost a frantic moan as he gasped, "Tell me you want me. Don't let me suffer this ache alone. _Want me_, Christine."

"No, no," she whimpered and futilely tugged against his bruising grip. The hands upon her forearms never surrendered; they pinched _tighter_, and her struggle only earned her more aggression as he thrust his body against hers and ground her into the hard floor. "Erik, stop this. _Please_."

"No, beg me to take you instead. Let me hear those glorious words on your beautiful lips. _Say it_, and perhaps you'll earn your freedom."

He dangled it before her, the only thing she wanted, and made it seem attainable. But…such heinous conditions to obey. She wasn't certain she could form those vile words on her lips.

"Please…"

"_Say it_," he commanded again, arching his erection like a deadly weapon, and desire was ugly scripted across that demon face, taut and clenching features that were already such a demented palette. She yearned to look away, but could not break a mesmerized stare.

"Please, Erik…" Her cheeks flamed a vibrant pink as she swallowed against a weight in her throat and obeyed, softly stammering, "Take me."

He moaned his desperation and rocked against her, urgently begging, "Say you want me."

"I…I want you," she conceded. "…Now let go."

But his distorted face was creased in a longing he could not hide, and ignoring her command, Erik pressed his misshapen mouth fiercely to hers, sucking her frantic cry between his lips and never permitting another. He was voracious and consuming, allowing her no chance to protest as he kept her pliant and pinned beneath him. His tongue jealously yearned for a taste, and without hesitation, he slid it deep, coating every taste bud in her sweetness and groaning to the depths of his being at her flavor. She was delicious and honeyed, and he could not seem to get enough when he body throbbed for _more_.

More, but how to take it when his lover was a trembling shape beneath him, attempting at every second to thwart him as she jerked and sought to disengage a kiss. Lips misaligned, and his misshapen one struck her nose and cheek as he tried to unite them again.

"Christine!" he finally hissed, vicious enough to have her halting and staring in terror. "Stop this hellion behavior and _kiss me_."

"No, no…"

"Shall I lay threats, my beloved?" He hastily concocted points in his passion-clouded mind to lean upon for compliance. "Obey me, or I will never let you see the light of day again. A real _cage_, Christine, bars and locks in the underground and a nightingale with clipped wings. You will live out your days as a prisoner in a jail cell. _I_ have endured such horrid circumstances before. Locked in with no hope for reprieve, and I can promise you that it is unpleasant. You will not favor bars and a lack of privacy, _always_ under your jailer's watch." He saw the fear his words brought to her pretty features, every traumatic picture developing on the canvas of her mind's eye and playing vividly enough for him to glimpse horror, and he grasped the chance. "A kiss, Christine. _Kiss me_, lest a cage be your future."

Tears gathered at the corners of blue eyes, but before they ever spilled their crystal wares, she leaned close and set her timid lips back to his, _where they belonged_ as far as he was concerned. The action made him jolt with a delicious start through every limb.

_Her_ kiss was something altogether different. When his had been violent, hers was tender and hesitant, always with a question in the background, a doubting if she moved right and pleased him, intrepid innocence that only drugged his senses onward. Oh, his Christine was a list of contradictions, and he adored her for it.

One shy kiss, and as she drew back as if she'd conquered the challenge, he almost broke character as he insisted, "You play innocence so well! I'd almost forgotten."

Christine ignored his words. It wasn't difficult when sensations engulfed so merciless and incessant, and as he pressed his telling hardness firm to her abdomen, she stifled an instinct to arch back and entice it onward. No, no… This was the _Opera Ghost_; she was supposed to _fear_ him and _loathe_ his very existence, not succumb, _never succumb_.

But he seemed to know what she sought to hide as if reading the secrets in her stare, and with the slightest smirk upon misshapen lips, he suddenly bent and burrowed his mouth against the crease of her throat. She jerked with the shock that pummeled her from the spot of a salacious kiss through her veins. It was…fire, a line of flames that raced and grew to consuming heights, burning her alive in their consummation.

"No… Stop…," she begged, halfhearted at best when her skin uttered the contrary and lined itself in goose bumps upon goose bumps, anything to be closer to that mouth and the sins it whispered in kisses. Sin…yes, this _must be_ a sin. To crave the disfigured features of a monster more than any other. To yearn to feel their oddities _everywhere_, trailed over flesh in more fevered caresses. She might burn in hell for it in the afterlife, but that fire could not compare to the one blazing beneath her skin. She longed to keep her wanting silent, but he nuzzled her tingling flesh and rubbed his bloated mouth against her throat, and a small cry escaped the lock of her lips and emblazoned its mark in the air.

"Yes, Christine," he rasped against her jaw, and his breath tickled as it grazed the surface and left her to shiver and finally _succumb_ and arch against him. "Give your desire to me. Pin it upon me, my girl, and let it ache for me alone. Distorted and ugly as I am, your body knows it can't exist without me. It is _screaming_ in this space and begging me to take you in words stronger and louder than those your lips dare to speak. Screams… I want screams from your lips as well, and I will have them."

She gasped but kept voice within as he devoured and made a heated path of kisses to the hollow of her throat, lapping with the tip of his tongue and making her shudder. He still had her wrists pinned immobile, and her hands moved restlessly against the stage floor with a need to delve into his hair and _clutch_.

"Scream," Erik softly beseeched and licked a path to the lace trim of her bodice. "I want to hear it, Christine. Tell me you're mine!" He demanded the words against the smooth expanse of her chest and savored the accelerated rush of heartbeats like the punctuation of a symphony's percussion, pounding opposite his own match. "Mine… Say it."

"Yours," she gasped.

"That's not enough," he chastised and rubbed his lips to the sensitive swell of her breast peeking above her neckline. "Louder. Say that you are the Opera Ghost's whore."

Defiance flickered in her blue stare as she fixed it on his, but he refused its uncommon strength and kicked her legs wide so he could press his hardness against her. Even layers in between couldn't stop it from teasing the place she ached, and the shiver she gave told him that he'd won.

"Say it," he offered sensibly one final time, "or I will _torture_ you, love, and never give you what you want."

"I don't want-"

"Don't you?" He moved his hips and savored her telltale whimper. "You _are_ the Opera Ghost's whore. Let me hear it."

But she spun his game upside down and shouted instead, "I'm not! I won't be! Never. If you mean to have me, you will have to _force_ me, Erik. Stop this madness!"

"Madness?" he mimicked with a grating chuckle as he lifted his head and put his face before her eyes again. "Madness is subjective. Broach insanity _with me_ then, my dear, and it will account for nothing that you ache for a disfigured monster in your bed. Most would call _you_ equally as _mad_."

"I don't!"

Before she could protest onward, Erik dragged her wrists high above her head until one of his large hands could ensnare both, and his free hand made a determined path between bodies, jerking up her skirts in an adamant fist.

"No!" She sought to stop him but struggle was futile as his hand found a means beneath fabric and landed upon her pantaloon-encased thigh.

"No?" he teased as his fingers slid temptingly higher and stroked her womanhood, feeling her heated wetness seep through to welcome him. "No, Christine? Keep insisting you _don't_ want while your desire sears my fingertips and calls you a liar. I _implore_ you to keep denying us both and give me the excuse to make this violent. Because you will _not_ be set free tonight until I find pleasure, and it will be _your_ choice if ecstasy is _yours_ as well."

As he made the proposition, he stroked, adept and adamant, no longer willing to play gentle with her. No, he made caresses that revealed what he was after and relished her shiver and moan.

"You want me," he stated for her, "and it doesn't matter that I am a disfigured beast. You burn anyway! Perhaps in some perverse twist of events, your desire considers me _beautiful_, even if your eyes speak different sentiments. …Am I beautiful to you, Christine?"

As he asked, he leaned that distorted face so close to her, and she couldn't help it… She snickered softly beneath her breath.

"Christine!" Erik scolded, and she lowered lids over guilty eyes and desperately sought to keep all-out laughter from escaping. "You are destroying the mood!"

"I'm sorry!" she blurted out, and the laugh broke out with the words as she peeked up at his aggravated features from beneath her lashes. "Oh, don't be mad! How can you lay blame? Have you any idea how difficult it is to stay in character with _you_?"

"This was _your_ idea!" he reminded, and even though he snapped, she caught hints of a smile on that misshapen mouth. "_You_ wanted to play Opera Ghost and be devoured by a monster. Do you not remember your own words, love? I would have been just as content making love to you in our _bed_ and not on a hard stage floor posing as a borderline rapist, but _you_ and the yearnings of your salacious appetite deemed _this_ would arouse you."

"And it does!" she justified and arched against the hand held still against her womanhood. "It's been too long since the Opera Ghost came out to play, but…I love you too much and know you too well to keep pretending to be afraid of you."

He huffed his annoyance and concluded, "Just resurrect feelings from days gone by. _This_ would have been your very nightmare not so long ago."

Christine pondered the assertion with the tinge of a smile and decided as she arched against his fingers again, "No, not even back then. I may have been…a bit frightened of the Opera Ghost-"

"A bit?"

"_But_ half of that fear was written in my own desires. I was _afraid_ of what I wanted, and…I wanted _this_." Blue eyes flickered mischievously as she bid, "Raw and passionate. So full of fire. Yes, _this_ is what I've always wanted."

Erik shattered his own character to pieces and placed a gentle kiss against her cheek. How it astounded him to consider how much she'd grown into herself! His innocent, little Christine was a vixen beneath modesty's coils, and he adored every second with that knowledge solely as his.

"I love you," he breathed and released her wrists so he could bundle her in a fierce embrace. "And I am so fortunate and blessed to have you as mine."

"Yours," she agreed.

He chuckled and buried her features in kisses as he muttered, "_Now_ you say it. Well, then say you're the Opera Ghost's whore as well and let me continue to ravish you. I am so hard that I _ache_, love."

"Yes, I can feel that," she stated with an impish grin as she arched willingly against his desire and made him moan. Leaning close to whisper the words into his ear, she obeyed, "I am the Opera Ghost's whore by _my own_ choice and desire, and I will be for all eternity."

His groan of surrender poured from a misshapen mouth and resounded through the empty theatre, vibrant as the sound of torn material as his hands ripped her pantaloons in their haste to rid her of their presence. He released patience and its restrictive reins, unable to wait any longer, and unclasping his pants with clumsy fingers, he frantically jerked them down and released his aching hardness. Never a pause, he parted her eager thighs and entered her in one vehement thrust, savoring her delighted cry as arms and legs clasped him close and deeper still. He felt so _loved_ and _wanted_ that it brought tears to his eyes.

His Christine, so wet and yearning for him, arching up to meet his every urgent thrust as he pressed her body into the hard, stage floor. She entwined her fingers in his hair, cupping his head in her tender touch as her lips made flagrant proofs of adoration in kisses against his deformity. She never made his face feel something worthy of shame, especially when desire was a cloud in the air. Then she claimed it something exquisite in her eyes.

As his hand slid within the neckline of her gown and found her bare nipple to tease between his fingers, he asserted, "You are _mine_. You have _always been _mine. From days of angels and ghosts, in the midst of the pain we caused one another and every trauma inflicted, you belonged only to _me_. You _loved_ me."

He stated it, needing assurances she granted, "Yes, and you're _mine_, Erik." She made the claim right back, and he adored the seal of permanent possession in her voice. _Hers_. It was the greatest title he'd ever been bestowed and surpassed even _Angel_.

Christine abandoned speech when her soft cries overrode comprehension. Every thrust drove her into the stage floor, and she didn't care if bruises remained at the end. Passion's scars were the most beautiful in existence, and as her hands raked fitful treks up and down his spine, she hated the coarseness of his jacket when his skin would be so warm to the touch with her body heat as its insulation. She'd chased the chill of the catacombs away and made her mortal angel fully alive.

"Do you love me, Christine?" he suddenly gasped out against her temple, and mewing her discontent to have to manipulate her tongue-tied mouth, she rocked harder against him and tried to make words evaporate again. But he would have none of that and ceased his deep thrusts, holding completely still and finding her petulantly disappointed gaze. "Do you? You best tell me and not speak a single lie, or I will leave you without satisfaction until you concede to obedience."

"Obedience?" she snapped instead. "I thought the game was over, Opera Ghost, and now you were just my Erik again."

But he smirked in that arrogant air she recalled from so long before and caught her wrists, holding them in one palm above her head. "Oh no, I can always be the Opera Ghost if the occasion calls for it, and _he_ will not take defiance and spirited willfulness. Tell me what I want to hear, Christine."

She sought to break him, wriggling her hips and enticing his motions, but his perseverance was cemented and firm. He remained rooted within her and simply tilted that unmasked face inquisitively, awaiting her concession.

"Oh, all right!" she shouted with the hint of a giggle. "Yes, yes, you know I love you more than anything! Are you happy now? _Continue_, and don't you dare be gentle."

He arched his brows at her authoritative tone and replied, "Yes, Madame Opera Ghost. Anything you wish." And with a slight chuckle he could not contain, he obeyed _her_ this time and moved with intent, savoring her whimper of delight.

"I say the same," he vowed with frantic kisses to her features. "I love you more than anything in existence, my Christine, and I will _never_ let you go."

She seemed to savor his oath and met his ferocity with her own, burying her lips against his collar as her peak approached. He felt her go over its edge, her violent shout so like the screams he'd earlier demanded. He didn't tell her that he'd won, but that was his only cohesive thought as he eagerly followed her over the edge and moaned absolute surrender.

Did any greater bliss exist than to find ecstasy in the embrace of the woman he loved and know he'd given pleasure right back? He felt complete and dropped her captive arms so he could hold her inseparably to his shape as gasped breaths told a story of passion until they calmed again. Slow, steady, and lungs from two bodies moved as one with every inhale-exhale motion.

"Next time we play that game, I expect a greater commitment to character," she suddenly said and kissed his brow.

"What?" he scoffed with a chuckle. "_My _character or _yours_, love? _You_ were the one to destroy the illusion. I would have happily pinned you to the floor and had my way with you in provocative abandonment, but _you_ forgot what an _actress_ is supposed to do and ruined the show."

"I wouldn't call it ruined by any means," she protested, setting more kisses against his face. "I would say I _improved_ upon our libretto. You don't agree?"

But with her body still sheathing his and her lips soft and delicate against his scarred cheek, he granted defeat with a sigh. "All right, from now on, we play games _your_ way, love, for I see no reason to offer protest. You are an amazement, my Christine."

"I agree," she concluded with a grin, "and now that that is settled, I deem that we return to our home, a decently soft bed, and skin this time. I want to _touch_ you, Erik."

How could he possibly refuse? With anticipation to make him tremble, he abruptly rose and scooped her into his arms, rushing for the nearest entrance to the catacombs. In some vein, he was relieved that an earlier scene of chase and violence had been a contrived reality, a fantasy that never came true. He'd pretend it with her to her heart's desire and love her all the more for every freely given touch and kiss she granted in the aftermath. It reminded him that for all his monstrous faults, he'd won love in the end, and that was the greatest reality of all.


End file.
